[Peace-discuss] Dean does the Dem waffle and we kill people

[C. G. Estabrook]

<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=156238>

While appearing on CNN's "American Morning," DNC Chairman
Howard Dean was asked about his San Antonio radio comments and
said his words were taken "a little out of context" and
compared it to the way intelligence was "cherry picked" before
the war began.

"We can only win the war, which we have to win, if we change
our strategy dramatically," Dean said. "The Democrats are
coalescing around a different strategy. We hope the President
will join us." At another point in the interview, Dean said:
"The President has said himself we couldn't win the war,"
referring to the President's 2004 interview with Matt Lauer in
which the President was addressing the war on terror.

Dean described his plan this way: "I'm with Jack Murtha on
this. We need a redeployment of our troops, bring the 50,000
Guard troops home in the next six months, they don't belong
there. We need a special task force of anti-terror troops
staked out in the Middle East. We need 20,000 additional
troops in Afghanistan, not in Iraq. We need to redeploy our
troops and make  stop making our troops the target over there.
We can turn this over to the Iraqis."

Asked after his interview whether Dean was switching his
support from following former Reagan Administration official
Lawrence Korb (who envisions US troops getting out of Iraq
over two years) to Murtha's approach (who has said that he
thinks six months is a reasonable amount of time that it would
take for US troops to get out of Iraq), DNC Communications
Director Karen Finney said Dean still supports the Korb
approach and said that when Dean referenced Murtha, he did so
in order to signal that he shares Murtha's goal of getting the
target off the backs of American soldiers.

Dean also said in the interview that despite the media's
obsessions with intra-party differences, the differences among
Democrats are small "perhaps Sen. Lieberman excepted."

If you remember all the pounding Dean took from Lieberman in
2003 and 2004 for allegedly lacking a "certain trumpet,"
you've got to love the way Dean phrased this: "Not only do
most Democratic Senators, most Republican Senators now believe
that 2006 has to be a transition year - even Sen. Lieberman
voted for that resolution."

The New York Post's Deb Orin says Howard Dean's suggestion
that the war in Iraq is unwinnable makes him untouchable for
many Democratic candidates around the country. Tennessee
Senate hopeful Harold Ford tells Orin, "I probably won't be
inviting him to come in and campaign." Bob Kerrey hit Dean
hard on "Imus" this morning, in an appearance in which the
Greenwich Villager also suggested he didn't know what a
"simulcast" is and that he didn't know that Imus' show is a
radio program (that happens to be shown on TV).

New York gubernatorial hopeful Eliot Spitzer said yesterday
that Dean's comments about winning the war were "flat out dead
wrong," reports the New York Post.